Ülkü Erdoğan

Ulku Erdogan Kaş Artist

Ülkü Erdoğan is one of the Kaş artists, an ex-pat from Istanbul. She lives in Gökseki with her husband Sunder who is also an artist and who does caricatures and model boat building.

Ülkü and her husband Sunder, who is a miniature ship builder and caricaturist, often exhibit together. Sunder was featured last month on our BT Blogger and the BT Facebook Album.

Ülkü was born in İstanbul in 1949 and lived most of her life in Kadiköy on the Asian side of the city. She studied at Çamlica High School but she didn’t like school very much and dropped out in her second year. She started to work in Ankara Reklam in 1968 as a copyist. At that time they were making cartoon films and in those days, each scene was drawn by hand onto acetate paper and it was Ülkü who colored them.

In 1970 she joined Yeni İstanbul and in 1971 the Hurriyet newspaper. She also worked in Kelebek’s graphic department as a graphic designer and did “pikaj” or newspaper layout. In the days before computers, articles and photos had to be pasted onto a page layout board so as to prepare pages for the printing press. In May of 1978 she moved to Marmaris with her first husband and came back after his death in 1981. She started to work in the Güneş newspaper. She married Sunder in 1982 and quit work in 1984. At that time she was responsible for the publications of BURÇ, a monthly astrology magazine. She returned to Güneş in 1987 and worked there until 1991 when she retired.

Painting started as a hobby for Ülkü. She loved photography and she used to take photos of everything, especially cats. After she and Sunder moved to Kaş in 1998, she took many photos of historical sites and native scenes in and around Kaş. She never really had formal training but she thinks that a teacher she had in high school who taught perspective was very helpful and Sunder helped her a lot in developing her skills.

Ulku Erdogan Lycian Tomb painting

There was a time when Ülkü did a lot of collage work. She used to bring home out of date magazines that came to the newspaper where she worked. She would cut out the pictures and make collages out of them. She even did a book cover with this technique. Her paintings are mostly historical sites with always a cat in the picture. She recently started reverse-glass paintings with her husband Sunder who draws the caricatures, in reverse, and Ülkü colors them.

Ülkü is a very talented and skilled artist with a lot of modesty, she says she never thinks of making money with her art, she is happy with her creative work and one can see that in her beautiful paintings.

Ülkü and Serdar will host an exhibition at the Kaş Culture House during the month of March.
The Kaş Culture House is open every day except Monday from 10:00 – 12:00 and from 13:30 until 18:00.

Ulku Erdogan Kaş cat

One part of the exhibition are the beautiful paintings of Ülkü with historical sites in the background and with a pretty Kaş cat looking at you in each of them. Ülkü likes to take photos and then paints them as she sees them, adding the colorful personality of a Kaş cat.

The other part of the exhibition covers a collaboration of Ülkü and Sunder. Sunder, a caricaturist, draws the pictures of Turkish Pasha‘s, in reverse on a glass pane and Ülkü skillfully colors them. The idea was given to them by a friend and they chose several of the “Sadrazams” with funny names such as “Daltaban Mustafa Paşha” who was named as such because he liked to go barefoot.

Grand Vizier in the Ottoman Court

“Grand Vizier, in Turkish Vezir-i Azam or Sadr-ı Azam(Sadrazam), deriving from the Persian word vizier, was the greatest minister of the Sultan, with absolute power of attorney and, in principle, dismissable only by the Sultan…“

This exhibition is a must-see, not just because the artists are very talented but especially because the Pasha’s are funny to see and Ülkü’s cats are not to be missed.

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